Women, feminism, and geek culture

The seven links of highly effective spammers (4 August 2015)

Erykah Badu and a new generation of activist artists focuses on self-care | Washington Post: “It would’ve been just as easy to compile a track list designed to keep protesters righteously and justifiably indignant. But Badu is exercising her instincts here, and they’re telling her that everyone fighting for freedom and justice in the streets, behind screens and at pianos need sounds meant to soothe, music that compels us to heal, and lyrics that remind us how imperative it is for love and inner peace to temper our rage.”

Code Studio rocks; diversity does, too | Catherine: pyOraGeek: “But if you partner with groups that already have connections in diverse communities – like the YWCA, which makes anti-racism one of its keystones – getting some fresh faces can be pretty easy! … Another benefit of Code Studio is that it’s entirely web-based, so you don’t need to restrict your demographics to ‘kids whose parents can afford to get them laptops’.”

Nóirín, go lonraí solas suthain orthu | Medium: Beautiful tribute to Nóirín Plunkett. “Nóirín delighted in discovering others’ superpowers. Nóirín delighted in finding our collective superpowers. They worked to help us design our communities to be more welcoming, to accept the contributions everyone had to offer no matter how small, to build the doors and to build the walls.”

Futurism Needs More Women | The Atlantic: “Why can’t people imagine a future without falling into the sexist past? Why does the road ahead keep leading us back to a place that looks like the Tomorrowland of the 1950s? Well, when it comes to Moneypenny, here’s a relevant datapoint: More than two thirds of Facebook employees are men. That’s a ratio reflected among another key group: futurists.”

The White House’s Alpha Geeks | Backchannel — Medium: “Smith and Macgillivray are taking advantage of the gov-tech moment to involve the White House in a number of projects, including the Police Data Initiative (compiling information from cooperating local departments on things like who gets detained, and what happens with bodycams) and TechHire (to open up technical jobs to a diverse population). Smith has been at the President’s side at a number of events familiar to Californians but previously rare on Pennsylvania Avenue, like meetups, tech fairs and demo days.”

On Wyatt Cenac, ‘Key & Peele,’ And Being The Only One In The Room | NPR codeswitch: : “The tricky thing here, of course, is the soft skill of “navigating the terrain of white people” often translates to not upsetting the apple cart, and yet upsetting the apple cart is exactly what advocates for diversity say they want. The tension between those two motivations eventually prompts so many of The Only Ones to throw up their hands and bounce, like Cenac did.”

Dissenting Opinions May Occur: Some Thoughts on Yesterday’s Troubling “Writing Women Friendly Comics” Panel | The Mary Sue: Amazing description of (originally all-male) panel on how to write comics for women readers. Panel moderator interrupted all the women speaking: “Claiming that success in the industry is merit-based and gender-irrelevant while simultaneously using your position as an established male creator to literally shout down women’s voices is willful ignorance. It isn’t eccentric; it isn’t cute, and it isn’t excused by the generation you’re from or the comic world you came up in. Unfortunately, it’s also not uncommon.”

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